Huperborea

(Originally posted here)

The 12 Theses

1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.

False.

2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.

Again, his premise is false. I do not believe Jesus is Incarnate God, though.

3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.

I'm not sure what to say to this one.

4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.

I do not believe Jesus is divine or haploid. However, I deem his knowledge of christology deficient in light of this thesis.

5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.

False.

6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.

I do not espouse that soteriology but I dispute his characterization of it.

7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.

False.

8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.

False.

9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.

False.

10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.

False.

11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.

Wrong.

12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

Homoeroticism is a sin.

It is clear to me that Spong is really an agnostic hiding behind his mitre. Thus, he is a hypocrite and a false teacher who already stands condemned.